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The Cult of Efficiency
We live in an age dominated by the cult of efficiency. Efficiency in the raging debate about public goods is often used as a code word to advance political agendas. When it is used correctly, efficiency is important—it must always be part of the conversation when resources are scarce and citizens and governments have important choices to make among competing priorities. Even when the language of efficiency is used carefully, that language alone is not enough. Unilingualism will not do. We need to go beyond the cult of efficiency to talk about accountability. Much of the democratic debate of the next decade will turn on how accountability becomes part of our public conversation and whether it is imposed or negotiated. Janice Gross Stein draws on public education and universal health care, locally and globally, as flashpoints in the debate about their efficiency. She argues that what will define the quality of education from Ontario to India and the quality of health care from China to Alberta is whether citizens and governments can negotiate new standards of accountability. The cult of efficiency will not take us far enough.
312 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2001
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About the author
Janice Gross Stein
33 books6 followersJanice Gross Stein is Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She was the Massey Lecturer in 2001 and a Trudeau Fellow in 2003. She was awarded the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public debate. She is an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. She has received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Alberta, McMaster University, the University of Cape Breton, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 13, 2009
This starts so well, holds so much promise – but never quite lives up to that promise.
Far too much time is spent on definitions and not nearly enough time on the implications of the ideas being defined. I thought that I might learn something very interesting when she started out discussing the differences between efficiency and effectiveness – that efficiency has no value judgements attached. And look, I know one can kill people efficiently – for isn’t that the ultimate horror of what was Nazi Germany? – but I was expecting more to be made from this and was left feeling very disappointed.
The problem was that a lot of this book was devoted to the idea that choice is the core value of our post-industrial society. This is one of my pet subjects (and pet hates, just quietly). Generally, I get to complain that choice has been confounded with freedom. But I can’t do that in this case. Choice is even more important than freedom now, it seems.
The line is: given that there ultimately are no real values in society it is very hard to discuss efficiency for its own sake and so therefore we need a dialogue about what we want to be efficient in. We need to do this so that we can decide how we are going to hold people accountable, as accountability is a key concept in efficiency and so is clearly also a general social good. The market’s the thing – as this is the best way of providing choice, efficiency and accountability.
Mmm …
My problem is that this rousing call on the benefits of free market blather failed to address any of the issues that ought to have stood in the way of such a glowing (and uncritical) endorsement. To take just one counter argument. In Australia we have freedom of information laws – these require governments to provide information on their programs and processes and thereby be accountable to tax payers when they spend tax payer dollars. But if the government enters into an arrangement with a private company to either provide all of a particular service (and then we get to hear all of that nonsense about ‘steering rather than rowing’ being the core virtue of governments) or enters into a Public Private Partnership (PPPs) – then the decisions about how governments spend our tax payer dollars is instantly hidden from us behind a cloak of ‘commercial in confidence’ contractual obligation and restrictions. So, rather than the ‘free market’ providing more accountability, it in fact is generally used to ensure the exact opposite. Governments of all persuasions do this, as governments have good reasons to want to avoid being held accountable – not least something called ‘an election’.
We create situations where it is impossible for citizens to see if PPPs actually are more cost effective, efficient or in any sense superior to state provided services and then allow governments to say things like, ‘providing airline (banking, telecommunications, postal, electricity, water, transport) services is not a government core business’ and then let them sell us out so they can avoid being held accountable, whatever else is the cost. And all this so as to perpetuate the great lie that it is all being done in our best interests so as to provide for the efficient and effective provision of services. It is enough to make you weep.
Not that any of this is mentioned in any of these lectures. No, this is a ringing endorsement of free markets where the only proviso is bound up with our need to somehow figure out how to have informed debates in society about how to decide what it is we want to be efficient in.
I was let down by these lectures – not least because they started with an instance from the lecturer’s own life about her coming into conflict with bureaucratic efficiency and its less than human face that I felt held much promise in a discussion of this nature – sadly, I was wrong. If all that can be said about efficiency is that it shouldn’t become an end in itself without reference to what people actually need – well, there is not a lot to learn here, is there?
Far too much time is spent on definitions and not nearly enough time on the implications of the ideas being defined. I thought that I might learn something very interesting when she started out discussing the differences between efficiency and effectiveness – that efficiency has no value judgements attached. And look, I know one can kill people efficiently – for isn’t that the ultimate horror of what was Nazi Germany? – but I was expecting more to be made from this and was left feeling very disappointed.
The problem was that a lot of this book was devoted to the idea that choice is the core value of our post-industrial society. This is one of my pet subjects (and pet hates, just quietly). Generally, I get to complain that choice has been confounded with freedom. But I can’t do that in this case. Choice is even more important than freedom now, it seems.
The line is: given that there ultimately are no real values in society it is very hard to discuss efficiency for its own sake and so therefore we need a dialogue about what we want to be efficient in. We need to do this so that we can decide how we are going to hold people accountable, as accountability is a key concept in efficiency and so is clearly also a general social good. The market’s the thing – as this is the best way of providing choice, efficiency and accountability.
Mmm …
My problem is that this rousing call on the benefits of free market blather failed to address any of the issues that ought to have stood in the way of such a glowing (and uncritical) endorsement. To take just one counter argument. In Australia we have freedom of information laws – these require governments to provide information on their programs and processes and thereby be accountable to tax payers when they spend tax payer dollars. But if the government enters into an arrangement with a private company to either provide all of a particular service (and then we get to hear all of that nonsense about ‘steering rather than rowing’ being the core virtue of governments) or enters into a Public Private Partnership (PPPs) – then the decisions about how governments spend our tax payer dollars is instantly hidden from us behind a cloak of ‘commercial in confidence’ contractual obligation and restrictions. So, rather than the ‘free market’ providing more accountability, it in fact is generally used to ensure the exact opposite. Governments of all persuasions do this, as governments have good reasons to want to avoid being held accountable – not least something called ‘an election’.
We create situations where it is impossible for citizens to see if PPPs actually are more cost effective, efficient or in any sense superior to state provided services and then allow governments to say things like, ‘providing airline (banking, telecommunications, postal, electricity, water, transport) services is not a government core business’ and then let them sell us out so they can avoid being held accountable, whatever else is the cost. And all this so as to perpetuate the great lie that it is all being done in our best interests so as to provide for the efficient and effective provision of services. It is enough to make you weep.
Not that any of this is mentioned in any of these lectures. No, this is a ringing endorsement of free markets where the only proviso is bound up with our need to somehow figure out how to have informed debates in society about how to decide what it is we want to be efficient in.
I was let down by these lectures – not least because they started with an instance from the lecturer’s own life about her coming into conflict with bureaucratic efficiency and its less than human face that I felt held much promise in a discussion of this nature – sadly, I was wrong. If all that can be said about efficiency is that it shouldn’t become an end in itself without reference to what people actually need – well, there is not a lot to learn here, is there?
November 27, 2020
'The Cult of Efficiency' is a heavy read, exploring less about the idea of efficiency itself and more of the political theory around concepts like accountability, public/private markets, and effectiveness in healthcare and education. If you're into democratic and political theory, this is probably a pretty useful book... but if you're looking for a sociological interrogation of the idea of efficiency and its cultish status (which is how the title and blurb sells it), the book really misses the mark.
To be entirely forthright, it's one of those books I really struggled to engage with. It often caused my mind to drift while my eyes continued to attempt to read. It's not that it's theory dense, per se (in that it doesn't necessarily make a huge conceptual advance in theoretical constructs, nor does it really rest on a lot of deep theoretical precursors), but it's just surprisingly conceptual, heady, and dry for something that was meant to originally be a public lecture. To be honest, I likely need to come back to this book later to really grok the intellectual contributions, as the first read didn't really engage.
That experience was a shame, because I think the book likely contains some really critical ideas. While efficiency is only really engaged in a very narrow sense (e.g., political appeals about efficiency in healthcare and education), the book tackles broader themes of accountability, the role of the state, and tensions in public and private marketplaces. In general, I think I was able to pull out a few key themes:
- Efficiency often becomes a problematic term, because we don't ground it in the question efficient /at/ /what/?
- A relentless pursuit for efficiency is often, actually, about renegotiating lines of accountability for the quality and cost-effectiveness of service provision.
- Governments are increasingly being asked to "get out of the delivery of services," but are much more subtly facing demands to ensure efficiency of service delivery (defined in many different, at times conflicting ways) through oversight roles. Hence, it's not about less government, just about government in different forms and with different ends.
I was left craving two things, though, from this book: one stylistic and one conceptual.
Stylistically, I really wish it was more engaging. The prose is very dense and the examples are twisted to be much more conceptual than they need to be. This is the kind of topic where explicit examples and compelling vignettes could do so much to ground the more heady theory. Yet, despite this originally being delivered as a series of lectures, it just doesn't translate into engaging prose on the page.
Conceptually, I felt a little cheated in the narrow focus in how efficiency was defined. Had I known Stein before I bought the book, I would have expected the political science tome as it was. But, from the title and descriptive blurbs, it really casts the question of 'efficiency' much more broadly, with education and healthcare as pragmatic examples (rather than light stepping stones towards democratic theory). This was simply a mistake on my part, but I also think that the true "cult of efficiency" book is yet to be written, exploring the ways that efficiency takes on all sorts of guises and disguises as an end in-and-of-itself, while actually perverting many of the real goals we hold near and dear.
All that said, this is a useful contribution to the political science corpus on governance, service delivery, and democratic theory. But, if you're looking for the book that really interrogates the 'cult of efficiency,' well, I haven't found it yet (recommendations welcome!).
To be entirely forthright, it's one of those books I really struggled to engage with. It often caused my mind to drift while my eyes continued to attempt to read. It's not that it's theory dense, per se (in that it doesn't necessarily make a huge conceptual advance in theoretical constructs, nor does it really rest on a lot of deep theoretical precursors), but it's just surprisingly conceptual, heady, and dry for something that was meant to originally be a public lecture. To be honest, I likely need to come back to this book later to really grok the intellectual contributions, as the first read didn't really engage.
That experience was a shame, because I think the book likely contains some really critical ideas. While efficiency is only really engaged in a very narrow sense (e.g., political appeals about efficiency in healthcare and education), the book tackles broader themes of accountability, the role of the state, and tensions in public and private marketplaces. In general, I think I was able to pull out a few key themes:
- Efficiency often becomes a problematic term, because we don't ground it in the question efficient /at/ /what/?
- A relentless pursuit for efficiency is often, actually, about renegotiating lines of accountability for the quality and cost-effectiveness of service provision.
- Governments are increasingly being asked to "get out of the delivery of services," but are much more subtly facing demands to ensure efficiency of service delivery (defined in many different, at times conflicting ways) through oversight roles. Hence, it's not about less government, just about government in different forms and with different ends.
I was left craving two things, though, from this book: one stylistic and one conceptual.
Stylistically, I really wish it was more engaging. The prose is very dense and the examples are twisted to be much more conceptual than they need to be. This is the kind of topic where explicit examples and compelling vignettes could do so much to ground the more heady theory. Yet, despite this originally being delivered as a series of lectures, it just doesn't translate into engaging prose on the page.
Conceptually, I felt a little cheated in the narrow focus in how efficiency was defined. Had I known Stein before I bought the book, I would have expected the political science tome as it was. But, from the title and descriptive blurbs, it really casts the question of 'efficiency' much more broadly, with education and healthcare as pragmatic examples (rather than light stepping stones towards democratic theory). This was simply a mistake on my part, but I also think that the true "cult of efficiency" book is yet to be written, exploring the ways that efficiency takes on all sorts of guises and disguises as an end in-and-of-itself, while actually perverting many of the real goals we hold near and dear.
All that said, this is a useful contribution to the political science corpus on governance, service delivery, and democratic theory. But, if you're looking for the book that really interrogates the 'cult of efficiency,' well, I haven't found it yet (recommendations welcome!).
August 21, 2018
Does Efficiency Make Good Policy
A nurse's remark on how delaying the discharge of her elderly mother from the hospital would negatively affect the unit's performance statistics led Professor Stein to a series of questions: Is efficiency desirable as a public good? Is efficiency actually a justification for other goals, and if so what are they? Do we have a common understanding of what efficiency means and can it be measured for social goods as it is for material production?
To some extent we get what choose to measure which is not necessarily what we either want or need. One trap that the health system can fall into is substituting throughput for efficiency focusing more on cost-containment rather than long term effectiveness. Stein also examines the case of school vouchers where the ostensible goal is to improve quality but the underlying ethos is equality. She finds that that where vouchers are equitably available for everyone (Cleveland, Chile, Ontario), the system favoured the privileged and added to inequality, whereas in Michigan vouchers were only offered to the poor, which achieved the desired goal. Costs weren't lowered but effectiveness was raised.
In practice a free market is rarely if ever efficient in terms of waste, yet it generates enough wealth to make up for it. In the case of government we have a single payer that contracts out to a number of private or public contractors, however price alone is not the sole benchmark. She notes that the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham introduced the notion of accountability. While we turn away from government to provide services we turn back to it to provide standards and monitor quality.
The final chapter looks at a new trend, that governments not only give us the citizen-consumer the liberty to choose, but the additional notion that they guarantee the availability of choice.
The book is organized into six chapters and was originally delivered on CBC radio and in a public forum in six parts for the annual Massey lectures in 2001. There is also short postscript chapter on the nature of Security in the Post Industrial Age, apropos of 9/11. Stein concludes that efficiency is more a means than an end, a process, not a value, a cultic shibboleth that that masks unstated goals. And perhaps it would be better if we say more precisely what we mean so that we achieve what we want.
A nurse's remark on how delaying the discharge of her elderly mother from the hospital would negatively affect the unit's performance statistics led Professor Stein to a series of questions: Is efficiency desirable as a public good? Is efficiency actually a justification for other goals, and if so what are they? Do we have a common understanding of what efficiency means and can it be measured for social goods as it is for material production?
To some extent we get what choose to measure which is not necessarily what we either want or need. One trap that the health system can fall into is substituting throughput for efficiency focusing more on cost-containment rather than long term effectiveness. Stein also examines the case of school vouchers where the ostensible goal is to improve quality but the underlying ethos is equality. She finds that that where vouchers are equitably available for everyone (Cleveland, Chile, Ontario), the system favoured the privileged and added to inequality, whereas in Michigan vouchers were only offered to the poor, which achieved the desired goal. Costs weren't lowered but effectiveness was raised.
In practice a free market is rarely if ever efficient in terms of waste, yet it generates enough wealth to make up for it. In the case of government we have a single payer that contracts out to a number of private or public contractors, however price alone is not the sole benchmark. She notes that the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham introduced the notion of accountability. While we turn away from government to provide services we turn back to it to provide standards and monitor quality.
The final chapter looks at a new trend, that governments not only give us the citizen-consumer the liberty to choose, but the additional notion that they guarantee the availability of choice.
The book is organized into six chapters and was originally delivered on CBC radio and in a public forum in six parts for the annual Massey lectures in 2001. There is also short postscript chapter on the nature of Security in the Post Industrial Age, apropos of 9/11. Stein concludes that efficiency is more a means than an end, a process, not a value, a cultic shibboleth that that masks unstated goals. And perhaps it would be better if we say more precisely what we mean so that we achieve what we want.
March 28, 2020
Although the lectures brought up some points worthy of further interrogation and consideration, I found the overall impact of them to be somewhat disappointing. The distinctly Canadian centrist perspective on the topic was interesting to see (especially because this topic usually gets treated from a more private market-focused, American perspective), though I had really hoped for a more socialist-leaning conclusion. The lectures are a bit of a love letter to neoliberalism in places, even though Stein attempts to provide a humanist lens here and there with the focus on healthcare and education. Those were probably the high points of the series, for me, as I learned some new things about the public-private divide and systems which attempt to blend the two.
Having taken place originally in 2001, the concluding focus on security, terrorism, and international war seemed shoehorned into the subject, and dates the lectures a bit, as well. On the whole, I wouldn't particularly recommend them, but they provided a diverting enough bit of popular political philosophy to do housework to.
Having taken place originally in 2001, the concluding focus on security, terrorism, and international war seemed shoehorned into the subject, and dates the lectures a bit, as well. On the whole, I wouldn't particularly recommend them, but they provided a diverting enough bit of popular political philosophy to do housework to.
May 25, 2019
How do we find balance between services provided by a public authority and the right to choose which services (public or private) are best to use - most efficient? The issues are education, medical care, and national security. We must decide what service to give up in order to be comfortable with another. It's not as easy as it looks.
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January 12, 2024DNF. Too dense for me
August 7, 2013
I wasn't able to get into this book beyond 50 or so pages because I find Stein to be a desperately dull and uninspired thinker. She always seems startled by some of the most obvious and mundane observations. Years have past since she wrote these lectures and they have not been kind to her liberal sensibilities and predictions, especially where globalization is concerned, but then again, Stein shouldn't be making assertions that she has no business making. In a more dynamic and thoughtful writer's hands this topic could have been incredibly interesting instead of painfully dull.
January 19, 2011
This book talks about the basic premise that Canada's public goods and services are currently judged by politicians and citizens based on cost-efficiency, rather than effectiveness. Its an important concept that has given me a new method for assessing how our government works, but since I'm not writing a sociology paper I would have preferred, like, the Coles Notes version.
February 9, 2016
Not my favorite of the Massey lecture series; really just an overview of neoliberalism for the uninitiated.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews